Black Gods and Ivory Boxes
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: D.I. Lestrade is tasked with investigating the murder of Black Peter. After that mess with the Bavarian Prince, and with the Restorationists' unrest in Albion, he wishes it were otherwise. He's a Queen's man, and he'd like to think he's a good one too, but it's getting harder to stay both. Set in an AU of Gaiman's A Study in Emerald.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: ** I do not lay claim to the BBC's _Sherlock_, Neil Gaiman's _A Study in Emerald_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, or anything to do with the Cthulhu mythos. I make no monetary profit from this.

**Black Gods and Ivory Boxes**

Greg Lestrade liked to think that he was a good man. A Queen's man, yes, that went without saying – he could hardly be a detective inspector of New Scotland Yard without being a Queen's man – but a good man as well. It should have gone hand in hand, good men in the service of the ruler of Albion, but the truth was that men were men, and they would always have their faults and faulty predilections, even if they were sworn to uphold the law and reign of Victoria Regina. A dark truth, but that was the world for you.

Another dark truth was brewing above his head, storm clouds just like the weather forecast had promised, and Lestrade turned the collar of his coat up against the chill wind and the prospect of rain as he walked away from Tyburn's Triple Tree. A fresh crop of its sorry fruit hung from the gallows, and the last of them had just stopped her fitful kicking.

A good man, and a Queen's man. That was what he was, or what he tried to be, and if the five people strung up on the Tree today had had any sense, they'd have tried to do the same. They hadn't even denied the charges of treason, though one of them had cried at the sentencing, and another had fainted dead away from fear before the cart was pulled out from beneath their feet (they'd had to slap that one awake, no good hanging an unconscious traitor to the crown, the executioner had said). The worst for Lestrade was the one who had tried to be brave.

_Poor sods,_ he thought, keeping his eyes on the pavement as he passed the gibbets on the other side of the square. A few of those would have to be taken down if they wanted to make room for the ones they'd hanged this morning, and he was just glad that it wasn't _his_ job to get that done. _Poor stupid sods._

There weren't many people in the square – apparently the novelty of a good hanging had worn off in the past few months – and Lestrade couldn't pretend not to notice the person falling into step with him.

"Morning, Dimmock," he said.

"It's not a very good one, is it?" The younger man hunched up his shoulders, looked up apprehensively at the gray sky. "Still, five anarchists off the Queen's streets. I hear there are fourteen more for the Tree tomorrow."

"That's what I hear too." Above them, the iron cages creaked in the wind, and Lestrade tried not to breathe in the stench from them or listen to the crows at their grisly business. Anderson even said that there were a few for the shoggoths in the pits of Newgate prison tonight, but he took everything Anderson said outside of the forensics lab with a grain of salt.

"They _deserve_ it," said Dimmock, looking over his shoulder at the twisted shape of the Tree. The bodies were still there: they'd be taken down later in the day, when the executioner's crew was certain that they were all quite thoroughly dead. "Those lies about Her Majesty – those horrible lies – and spilling royal blood-"

"Not _technically_." There hadn't actually been any blood involved, though there had, without question, been murder done.

Dimmock shrugged off the correction. It made no difference to him. "And they admitted to it, they were proud of what they'd done. I don't understand it."

Neither did Lestrade, and he said as much, though his reasons for thinking that were patently different, and he kept those to himself. Dimmock was new to the Yard, relatively unblooded. His eyes still went wide and bright at the thought of serving the Crown, and he still said "Gloriana" and the other names for the Queen that could be pronounced with a human mouth with all the awe and reverence due to the Old Ones and more. He didn't understand how people could come to hate the royals. Lestrade got that bit –far be it for him to judge what royals did, he was just a copper, but other people would have it that they were given to unforgivable excesses and startling cruelties. What he _didn't_ understand was why the Restorationists bothered. Maybe things could be better, yes, but they could also get much worse, and since _worse_ often meant a rope necklace and dancing the hemp fandango…

Lestrade found himself nodding in blind agreement to what Dimmock was saying – something about Her Majesty's upcoming 900-year jubilee – and he would have gone on mutely agreeing with everything on autopilot if the other man hadn't said something about going back to the Yard.

"You go on ahead," he told Dimmock, who already had the keys to his squad car out (he had a keychain with the Queen's coat of arms on it). "I need to pop over to Baker Street for a bit."

"Baker Street? Is this to do with-?"

"With the Admiral? Yeah." Admiral Pyotr Halodniy– called Black Peter, a nephew of the White Lady of the Antarctic Fastness – had been found in his rooms, pinned to the wall with a harpoon like a beetle fixed to a card. That this had happened on the heels of Prince Franz Drago's murder and the uprising in Russia _and _the trouble at home had the Queen waxing wroth. Lestrade had been assured by his superiors that heads would roll if the crime was not solved, and he few doubts as to whose head would be doing the rolling. That he might lose his job was the least of it.

Dimmock had the decency to shudder. "I don't envy you."

"_I_ don't envy _me. _This sort of thing isn't supposed to happen."

"Evil times," intoned the other man, twiddling his patriotic keychain, "when mankind, in its ignorance, turns on its rulers and protectors. Still," he went on, suddenly sounding much more normal, "I didn't think you'd be asking for outside help."

"I don't have much of a choice. The higher-ups won't get their hands dirty" – _so they can't be blamed if it all goes pear-shaped – _"and my team's stumped." _I'm desperate_, he thought, and he hoped it didn't show on his face.

"But this 'consulting detective'—" The inverted quotation marks were palpable. Dimmock had met him once, and had come away from the experience with a healthy respect for the amateur practitioner, and an even healthier dislike for the man. 

"Look, I don't like him either. Not much." Lestrade shrugged. "But Jim Moriarty's the best chance we've got.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: ** I do not lay claim to the BBC's _Sherlock_, Neil Gaiman's _A Study in Emerald_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, or anything to do with the Cthulhu mythos. I make no monetary profit from this.

**Black Gods and Ivory Boxes**

**Part 2**

The flat at Baker Street was in its usual state when Lestrade came to call that morning. He had found that once you ignored the chemical whiff coming from the kitchen, 221B Baker Street was actually a pretty ordinary flat, of the sort rented by two ordinary males of the species in Central London. Even the mess was actually an ordinary sort of mess, once you got around the remains of the experiments that Moriarty was working on at the time (the worst of these was a package of thumbs that had clearly come from someone of royal blood – an unacknowledged bastard of a scientific turn who had donated his body to St. Bart's, Moriarty assured him, but the memory still gave Lestrade a chill) and Sebastian Moran's rather extensive collection of firearms.

Or at least Lestrade felt a little better thinking of it that way.

He found Moran in the living room once their landlady had showed him in (Moriarty, he'd learned over the years of their acquaintance, never answered the door himself if he could help it). The ex-army man greeted him pleasantly enough, and invited him to share a cup of coffee.

"I should have expected you," he said, gesturing Lestrade to a chair. "Jim's been sinisterly cheerful, I should have known there was a case going on. He's out, but he should be back any moment. now Care to explain why he's been wandering around the city with a great bloody harpoon?"

"What?"

"It's what it sounds like." Sebastian Moran went to the kitchen to get Lestrade a mug. Watching him go, the D.I. couldn't help feeling grateful that the man hadn't turned to crime. It was a horrible way to think of people, but there was absolutely nothing about Moran that would make him stick out of a line-up. He was _average_, the sort of bloke a witness would describe as a tall or middling tall, middle-aged (meaning anything from thirty to forty-five) white male with hair of any shade from blondish brown to brownish blonde. And the man was a crack shot to boot: Lestrade had, on one occasion, seen him shoot a man right between the eyes, from across the street through two plate glass windows on a windy night with another person partially in the way (justified, though they'd had to hush it up afterwards: the man had been a self-confessed murderer, indiscriminate of who or what his victims were as long as they got into the back of his taxi, but Moran shouldn't have had a gun, and Lestrade shouldn't have let him fire it, even if it had looked like the cabbie was about to do Moriarty in). "Jim Moriarty commuting – _commuting_ – around London carrying a great, _literally_ bloody harpoon. Mrs. Hudson nearly had hysterics when he came home. I'm amazed that he didn't cause a stampede on the Underground."

"I thought he preferred taking cabs."

"Nah, that's me." Moran shifted his right shoulder unconsciously as he sat back down after giving the detective his coffee. He had once confided in Lestrade that he disliked the London subway system – _going beneath the earth_, he'd called it – and the detective inspector suspected it had something to do with his time in Afghanistan. He'd been invalided home, after all, and everyone heard rumors of the wildness of the Afghan people and their strange gods, and the tortures they inflicted in their dark caves on those who would bring them under the right and proper rule of the Old Ones. For a split second it looked like he might say more, perhaps about the Queen's touch that he'd hinted at when they were having a quiet pint one night, but his face took on a closed, faraway look, and Lestrade didn't press him.

The moment was saved from becoming uncomfortable by Jim Moriarty appearing in the doorway, carrying a harpoon – Lestrade did a double-take before becoming convinced that he was actually seeing the thing – and covered from head to foot in tarry, black ichor.

"Ah, Lestrade!" he said, far too happily than the detective thought was appropriate for the situation. "I was waiting for you to show up. You've come from Tyburn, I see."

"Yeah, I was at Tyburn." Lestrade willed himself not to ask what the _Hell_ he had been up to – Moriarty had his methods and they got results, far be it for him to question them, and you didn't just _ask_ people with harpoons why they were covered in blood – but he couldn't stop himself from the more mundane, "How'd you guess?"

"I didn't _guess_." There was a congenial sneer in Moriarty's voice as he wiped the worst of the stuff off his face and hands with a towel that had been hanging on the back of Moran's chair. "You always get a droopy, morose look after you've been to a hanging. I can tell." He shrugged on a scarlet dressing gown, quite careless of the mess, and sat on the sofa, bouncing a little on the cushions as he settled himself. Moran gave him an arch look, as if to say that he was damned if that was going to come out of his share of the rent. "Though in this case, it was a simple matter of following the news. I was interested, you see – I had a hand in one of the cases. The Russian poisoner with the golden pince-nez, I wonder if you noticed her? But I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't, that was all very hush-hush. I can only talk about it now since it was so _successfully_ brought to a conclusion."

The detective inspector remembered that a pair of spectacles had been taken off one of the girls before they slipped the noose around her neck, and shuddered.

"Yes, she was quite the cold-blooded little thing. Out for revenge, she said. _Rache._" Moriarty smiled in that disconcerting way of his. "You remember that, of course."

Lestrade bristled. As if he needed to be reminded of the Prince Drago case – _A Study in Emerald_, Moran had called it, and it was a good job he'd kept it off that blog of his. He stood, making as if to leave. "Look, I'm not here for cold cases, Moriarty. If a gibe and a bloody horror sideshow is all you've got for me, I'm taking the case elsewhere."

"_There is no elsewhere._" The words cracked in the air like a thunderbolt from an angry god, and they made Lestrade fall back onto his seat. It said something about Sebastian Moran's nerve that all he did was raise his eyebrows. "And you know it, Detective Inspector," Moriarty continued in a far milder tone. "And I'll have you know that that wasn't an empty gibe, oh no." He tilted his head a little to one side, a movement that Lestrade had always found to be vaguely reptilian. "If you'll care to let me explain?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: ** I do not lay claim to the BBC's _Sherlock_, Neil Gaiman's _A Study in Emerald_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, or anything to do with the Cthulhu mythos. I make no monetary profit from this.

**Black Gods and Ivory Boxes**

**Part 3**

"I'm sorry," said Jim Moriarty, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. "I seem to have gotten into Sebastian's habit of telling stories from the wrong end – you see what he does on his blog. Awkward, isn't it?"

"You could say that." Lestrade glanced at Moran, who gave him a don't-blame-me-I'm-just-the-flatmate look.

"Or at least it is in conversation. Let's start over. Tell me, what do you know of the _Gloria Scott_?"

"The _Gloria Scott_?" Lestrade was familiar enough with the consulting detective's methods that he knew better than to ask out loud if the ship was connected to the case. Of course it was. And he'd thought that the one good thing about this case was that it couldn't possibly get any worse. "She's a prisoner ship. A transporter. Or she was before she disappeared."

"Yes, and what else?"

_What else, _indeed. There were mad rumors going around that Restorationists had commandeered her, converted her into a floating sanctuary, a base of operations of sorts. It actually seemed possible to Lestrade that that was where they were broadcasting that news program of theirs from, but his credulity drew the line when Anderson started spouting that rubbish about the _Gloria Scott_ being made into a battleship that they were going to use to find and destroy ancient R'lyeh.

"Not much," he said finally, turning the coffee mug Moran had given him in uncomfortable half circles. "Nothing you could call _concrete._ I honestly wouldn't have paid attention to it if Victor Trevor hadn't been on board when she vanished."

"It's a sad day for law enforcement when its brightest officers only pay attention to the news when there's a criminal element involved."

"Well, that's our job, isn't it?" Though he was used to Moriarty's decidedly less than flattering opinion of the police force, it didn't mean Lestrade had to like it, and his tone was arch and sharp.

Moriarty waved it off. "Anyway, that sweet little ship. It's all true, what they say about her. Oh, maybe not about R'lyeh, only an _idiot_ would believe the stuff about R'lyeh, but the rest of it's fairly accurate. Do you know that if Victor Trevor comes ashore anywhere in the whole wide world he's to be shot and brought to Her Majesty, in that order?"

"I didn't think he was still alive."

"Oh, you just didn't _think_." The consulting detective leapt up from the sofa – he was a small man but given to sudden bursts of movement – and snatched up his harpoon again. "The _Gloria Scott_ was Black Peter's-"

"Admiral Pyotr Halodniy," corrected Lestrade automatically.

"Yes, yes, yes, thirty-seventh in line to the throne of the Antarctic Fastness, nephew – or some sort of relation anyway, always hard to tell with royalty – to the White Lady, ruler of the same, commander of the _Sea Unicorn_…him. Black Peter. He was given that name for a reason, Detective Inspector, and he _liked_ it. You could even say he relished it. So have some respect for the dead, and let me use his name."He punctuated this with a twirl of his harpoon: Lestrade didn't see it fit to argue the point anymore. "Black Peter," Moriarty continued, absently tossing the harpoon from hand to hand (Lestrade wished he wouldn't do that, and he was pretty sure that Moran felt the same way, going by the rather anxious way he was watching his flatmate's hands), "was after the _Gloria Scott_."

"Is that what you think?" It was Moran who asked. He'd abandoned even the pretense of still being interested in his breakfast.

"No, that's what I _know_. There's a difference. What I _think_ is that he was killed to stop him from finding her. It was only a matter of time, after all, and the _Gloria Scott_ wouldn't have had a hope in hell if he'd caught her at sea – and she's not something the Restorationists can afford to lose."

"_Restorationists._" The word left a bad taste in Lestrade's mouth. He didn't see how they thought they were making things better for anyone. More than anything he just wished they'd _stop_. He remembered the gibbets and the Triple Tree, and promptly wished he hadn't.

"Tired of the word, are you?" asked Moriarty. "I remember that you couldn't bear to hear it spoken just about a year ago. And Sebastian here didn't even know what they were. We're all considerably better educated now, aren't we?"

"So they've done another murder." Moran sounded grim, and Lestrade saw him shift his shoulder unconsciously. He wondered if he was imagining Moran holding that particular part of him a little more stiffly in the recent past.

"_Obviously_. That nasty business in Russia with the Czar Unanswerable has only made them bolder. The only questions in this case are who did it, and how."Quite abruptly, Moriarty dropped the harpoon, and began to pace, hands clasped behind his back. "I've been working on the _how. _Black Peter was speared to death in his hotel suite, pinned like a bug with a weapon from his own collection, with the point of the harpoon driven a good foot into the wall. I've been trying to recreate that. Of course, no creature can properly approximate Their anatomy, but I've had some pretty fair substitutes. There was a dead bear the other day, and St. Bart's very generously donated a human cadaver. The last I tried was a giant squid fresh from the docks. I don't flatter myself when I say I'm probably a teensy bit stronger than the average man, but I couldn't do what the killer did. Not even with practice." And he spun on his heel to face them. He made a rather sinister picture, looking as he did, covered in the ichor, dressed in red, and the expression on his face suggesting that he took his failure at replicating the murder as a grievous personal offence.

"Ergo," he said, "the killer was either someone extremely practiced at harpooning things– a professional, one of those whalers, maybe – or, perhaps, and I think this is more likely, he was something more than a man."

"What do you mean 'more'?" Lestrade had a pretty shrewd idea what it meant, but he hoped he was wrong.

"You know very well what I mean. You'd need more than human strength to drive a harpoon through a living body – any living body, never mind royalty – and a foot through mortar and concrete after that. And you don't need to be more than an eighth Old One to be that strong. Being of noble blood doesn't always make for noble character, and you know how some of these half breeds are. Malcontents. Dissenters. So very _bitter_ that their arses will never warm the throne.

"Now the question is who it was exactly. Your police report says that Black Peter had set out drinks before he died – that says he knew his killer, was even expecting him. And the drinks, you say, were hard rum – that, since I'm sure he had more choices than that at his disposal, says he was expecting a sailor, maybe even someone from the _Sea Unicorn's _crew."

"Are you sure?" As was so often the case, the detective inspector found himself dumbfounded while on the receiving end of Moriarty's deductions. On his own, he'd gotten as far as Admiral Halodniy – oh, all right, Black Peter – expecting company, but he'd had to admit that he was stumped beyond that.

"That's offensive, Lestrade, of course I'm sure." That he was piqued showed clearly on Moriarty's expressive face. "Now, I have a lead – an informant, if you will – who says that he knows something of the matter."

"That's – that's great, that's _brilliant_." Lestrade began to rummage in his pockets for his notebook and pen. "If you could give me a name and address-"

"Not. So. Fast," Moriarty cut him off. "The man is cautious, rightly so, and it is likely that he is being watched. Visit him officially, and he'll probably end up dead himself. You wouldn't want that on your conscience, would you? No, I didn't think so. But I still need your help, detective inspector."

"And here I was thinking I needed _yours_."

"Well, you do. But you'll make a better agent than most of Scotland Yard, even if you can be a little dim."

"Try to play nicely, won't you, boys" interjected Moran, just as Lestrade was opening his mouth to make an angry retort. "Both of you," he added, meaningfully.

Jim Moriarty rolled his eyes. "I need you to meet this man. Captain Basil. He sailed on the _Sea Unicorn _on her last voyage. I'd go myself, but I might be recognized, and then everything would go to pieces. Even sending Sebastian would be a risk." He swallowed. "I have reason to believe our old friend Rache is involved. You remember. The actor calling himself Sherry Vernet."

Lestrade's mouth opened in an 'O' equal parts shock and dismay. The man had murdered Prince Franz Drago – or he'd at least led him to his death, a John (or maybe James) Watson had done the actual murder – and had gotten away quite cleanly afterwards.

"Yes, him. I rather foolishly revealed myself to him during our last encounter, and he'd see through any disguise I cared to put on now. You, however…you might escape his notice."

"What do I need to do?" The smart thing – the _right_ thing – to do would be to report back to the Yard, tell them who was involved, leave it to the people whose division it actually belonged to. But he wasn't going to do that, was he, even if his mouth went dry at the thought of Rache. The man had done murder and gotten away with it _on his watch_, and he was damned if he was going to let it happen again. He was twice, maybe even thrice-damned, if he was going to let anyone _else_ bungle the investigation. Moriarty was maddening, but, possibly against his better judgment and common sense, Lestrade trusted him. Or at least he had faith in his abilities, which, in this particular case, was tantamount to trusting the man, even if he was more than a little batshit crazy.

"Meet our Captain Basil. He'll be at the Musgrave gin house in the Rookery-"

"_The Rookery of St. Giles?_ " The mug dropped from Lestrade's suddenly nerveless fingers. He was barely aware of trying to help Moran sponge up the mess on the table. "Jim, people know I'm a copper – I won't last half an hour in there."

Moriarty shrugged, a gesture which involved his shoulders, arms, hands, and somehow even his knees. "If it's too much to ask, I won't be the one who has to explain why Black Peter's killer is still running free as a butterfly."

"I could go," volunteered Moran, removing the coffee-soaked towel – the same one Moriarty had wiped his hands on, Lestrade was intensely sorry for whoever did the actual housekeeping for these two – from the table. "I'm pretty sure-"

"Try to use that brain of yours, I know it works tolerably well on some days. He knows you, too, Sebastian. He's _seen_ you up close, and with me, how do you think that's going to go down?"

"Sweet saints." Lestrade took a deep breath, grit his teeth, and committed his soul to whatever god could find it. It seemed like he didn't have much of a choice. "Okay. Tell me more. I'll see if I can manage it."

"I knew you'd come around." Moriarty beamed at him. "It's just on the outskirts of the Rookery, you know. It's practically on Shaftesbury Avenue. Captain Basil will be there at six o'clock tonight. I haven't actually met him, we've exchanged a few emails and texts, and he knows me as Sam Culverton-Smith. You're to meet him at Musgrave's, and take down what he has to say down _to the punctuation marks. _I'm sure it'll all be useful to you."

"Right."

"And I would appreciate it if you sent me a text when it was all done."

"Sure. I'll do that." When he was safely away from the Rookery, of course. Flash a fairly new cell phone around in there, and you'd deserve what you got. "This Captain Basil, how will I know him?"

"Oh. It's actually a question of how he'll know _you_." The consulting detective looked around the room as if he was searching for inspiration. "That box on the mantelpiece, that little ivory one – yes, that one, careful, it's rather delicate – that's distinctive enough. I'll tell him to expect it. Hand it to him when you meet him, and tell him I couldn't come myself, so _sorry_. And wrap it up before you go, I know what you keep in your pockets, you'll batter it to bits. Sebastian, give him a sheet of newspaper, no, I don't _care _that you're still reading it, it's rubbish anyway."


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: ** I do not lay claim to the BBC's _Sherlock_, Neil Gaiman's _A Study in Emerald_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, or anything to do with the Cthulhu mythos. I make no monetary profit from this.

**Black Gods and Ivory Boxes**

**Part 4 **

The moon was hanging fat and heavy in the sky when Lestrade set out. It was't quite full yet – a waxing gibbous, he thought the phase was called – but it filled the streets with a pale pink light all the same. In school, Lestrade had been taught that the moon used to be a sort of whitish yellow until the coming of the Old Ones and the fall of Rome, but it was hard to believe it had ever been anything but a comfortable crimson, despite the somewhat realistic yellow lights in the sky they put in period movies.

He had Moriarty's little ivory box in his right coat pocket, still wrapped in a page of the morning paper (Moran hadn't managed to get it back). Lestrade hadn't bothered to unwrap the thing. It all seemed very cloak and dagger, this arrangement – couldn't Moriarty have sent his contact a photograph and left Lestrade to supply the necessary ID? – but then the consulting detective was a man known for his peculiarities. His contacts, Lestrade figured, might well share the same stretch of normality.

And the Rookery. He tried not to think about the place even as he approached it. The Rookery of St. Giles was more than just a bad neighborhood. Moran had described the place – handy thing, that blog of his – as a patch of lawlessness on the face of the city, and Lestrade was inclined to agree. He was going on foot because no form of public transportation would come near it, and only a complete idiot would leave a car parked in the area. There was no hiding the fact that he didn't belong there, so he hadn't bothered with a disguise. As for his being a cop, he couldn't help that either or that some people could just _tell_ you were the police, and he'd just have to wrap things up before anybody caught on.

It was a damn fool thing to do – a younger policeman of Dimmock's fanatic ilk had been fatally stabbed there last week just, as far as anyone could tell, for looking out of place – but it was for Queen and country, and he had to hope that that would be enough to keep him safe. (Mostly it wasn't, he knew that, but he could hope.)

The Musgrave gin house was _not _practically on Shaftesbury Avenue, and Lestrade cursed Moriarty roundly as he went deeper into the Rookery. When he finally found the place, he was far enough into St. Giles that no-one would report his murder if it happened, and he was swearing steadily, in his head (_it made him feel better, damn it, fuck this fucking business, shut up and let him curse, bollocks and shit and arse_), when he sat down at the bar.

He looked around as the barkeeper made his slow, rather reluctant way towards his new customer. It was a small place, only clean if you _really_ stretched your definition of the word, and there was just one other person there, sitting at a badly lit table by stairs that Lestrade guessed led up to private rooms on the second floor. The man had a glass in front of him, but he didn't seem to be interested in it.

The barkeeper didn't so much ask what he wanted as grunt and glower to get the message across. Lestrade asked for a pint of Shoggoth's Old Peculier (oddly named drink, you'd think they wouldn't allow it), and the man shoved a grubby glass in front of him. He paid for it in change (he hadn't brought much money with him – if he was going to be robbed he was damned if whoever did it was going to have the satisfaction of good takings), and, for luck, tapped a finger on the image of the Queen, awe-inspiring and dreadful, on one of the coins before he went over to talk to the man in the corner.

"Mind if I have a seat?" Lestrade asked, holding his drink a little gingerly. He could _feel_ the grit on the glass.

"Go ahead." The man's tone was friendly enough, if a little wary. Given where they were, Lestrade didn't blame him. He was, at a guess, shorter than the D.I., and he wore his nominally blonde hair in a military cut.

"What a place, eh?"

"I've seen worse." A simple statement of fact. Lestrade noticed that the glass on the table was still full.

"Been abroad, then?"

"You actually don't have to go very far."

"Mhm." Lestrade took a sip of his drink, decided it was a bad idea, and put it down. "I'm looking for a Captain Basil."

"Ah, no, you've got it wrong. I'm John Watson. _Captain_ John Watson, if that's any consolation to you, but I'm not who you're looking for."

"Oh." The detective inspector made to rise, calling Moriarty some very foul names in his head. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"'S no problem." John Watson knocked back his drink, stood from the table. "The man you want's upstairs. He said to expect, well, not you, but somebody. Come on, I'll take you up."


End file.
